Dev Shawn McGrath Lays Down Some Smack: storytelling in games is worthless

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I don't think "wot is game" is a refreshing change from "wot is RPG." Really just more of the same; especially when the line is drawn on exactly the same boundary as the "wot is RPG" clusterfuck was fought.

Other terms we can fight over because we're sadomasochists who specialize in self-flagellation:

Language changes, and language has moved on. Game now encompasses video games, there are far more people that see 'game' as the sort of thing we talk about than what you're trying to limit it to. And in that case, I'd suggest that if you really want the distinction to exist in the word, maybe stop calling your thing 'game' and call it something else instead?

A perfectly good word exists for contests: a game. I think everything (adventures/stories, puzzles, and games) have been lumped into the same term "a game" because... computer software is complex ! Many people can't wrap their head around this much complexity. The definition of a computer is very vague:

Originally Posted by wordreference.com

an electronic device which is capable of receiving information (data) and performing a sequence of logical operations in accordance with a predetermined but variable set of procedural instructions (program) to produce a result in the form of information or signals.

but it's the only suitable one if you want to do it justice. There's no need to have separate words for games on computers and outside computers.

Not helping the confusion is the fact that nearly(weasel words) all computer software is used in similar way. You move mouse around and/or press some keys.

Originally Posted by Wizardry

But in this case "video game" isn't the medium. Computer software is. You can create a piece of software to tell a story and it may even look like a video game. It wouldn't make it a video game though. This is something you don't seem to understand. Video games are pieces of software, but they are pieces of software that are games. This isn't an argument about whether video games should or shouldn't be telling a story, it is about whether games should or shouldn't be telling a story.

Bringing up movies and comparing them to books is completely pointless because movies are not games.

Even Game Masters in pen & paper RPG games - which have many similarities to telling a story - know that it's futile and ultimately harmful to force a story on players. A good GM should be able to take the story off the track if it makes sense, if players decide to try something interesting but unexpected.

I'm sorry that's utter horse shit. When you GM you have a degree of structure to what you're doing and the players are expected to abide by it. If the players all arrive at the haunted mansion for the weekend to investigate the disappearance of the 4th earl of Rochester, sure you might indulge them with opting to head to the nearby Village for a few rounds of pale ale or even a day trip to Brighton in your feeling particularly adventureous, but you're not going to allow them to head off to kathmandu or somewhere unrelated to solving the mystery. This idea that P&P RPGing is unstructured improv with dice is a fiction. Even freeform RPGing has a narrative frame to it.

Originally Posted by Fhnuzoag

The whole let's stop calling this a game argument is so tediously pointless to me. And it's flatly false - there is *no* binary division between game and not-game. There's instead a full and varied spectrum, between experiences where gameplay is important, and where gameplay is secondary. As there is between games whose graphics is abstract, and those that are realistic. And whose mechanics are simulationist, and those that are fine tuned for balanced gameplay. And ones where challenge is essential, and where challenge is mostly for pacing and spacing out set-pieces. Throwing down on 'oh this and that isn't a game' serves no one any good at all, except as a way of finding disagreement with someone who puts that threshold at a slightly different position and enjoys different types of experiences. It's just dumb.

Who cares what you call it? The fact is, people like to play stuff like the Walking Dead. Games writers like to write about them. Self-described gamers like to discuss them. Jumping in with NotAGame!! just makes you look like a dick.

Truth. I approve of this post.

Originally Posted by Doesn'tmeananything

But this whole argument is false dichotomy. Music, cinema, etc. are irrelevant to games because of how different they are structurally. Games are about interactivity first and foremost, and you simply can't find that anywhere else.

You honestly believe that your perception of a film/TV show/piece of music is the same as everyone else's? That we all experience 'passive' mediums the same way? Consider how much conversation a show like LOST generated talking points for people. How many different LOST theories arose? Or how differently people react to the music of Nine inch nails or Aphex twin.

Also the very nature of narrative extends beyond media. We've been telling stories to each other for a few Millenia now and although we've evolved different ways of telling them, fundamentally the 3 part act (beginning, middle & end) still holds true. Is it possible that games can evolve a distinct narrative from that of other media? (the gaming equivalent of pulling a Pulp fiction or Rashamon) Most certainly, but only when games have developed a unique voice, and that's only going to occur by engaging with existing narrative techniques and evolving the mediums lexicon (which is scant at this point in time). Back in the early days of Television the entirety of what was broadcast was effectively talking heads. Essentially no different from the radio (the medium it threatened) save for the fact that you could see the people talking at you. Because albeit the technology existed, the unique visual voice of television hadn't evolved. Narrative in games isn't going to get anywhere unless it takes its lead from what's come before as a starting point, and it's certainly not going to get anywhere by rejecting wholesale the idea narrative in the first place.

Look at what Rockstar are doing with GTA V for instance with the 3 interchangeable character idea. Their early games are apologetically cinematic ripoffs, but they're evolving their storytelling approach to make something that's unique to the medium. Evolution > revolution.

Originally Posted by Doesn'tmeananything

Every player will have a very different experience with, say, Crusader Kings 2, Dwarf Fortress, Deus Ex, or, I don't know, Jagged Alliance. Meanwhile, the Walking Dead presents a scant amount of options that only change what you watch (and it's not even that good to begin with, if judged like a piece of cinema). The former games use the strengths of the medium, with emphasis on player agency, simulation, a fairly complex set rules to create a framework for a great amount of scenarios and emergent gameplay. The latter borrows heavily from cinema.

Yet none of the former are remotely as emotionally engaging as the latter.

Originally Posted by Doesn'tmeananything

Otherwise, it'd be acceptable to call DVD menu a game with 'terrible mechanics' which, nevertheless, 'doesn't make it a bad game'.

The ability to juggle chunks of linear narrative is not the strength of the medium.

No, it's a strength of the medium. The ability to offer a closer connection to the character is another strength of the medium. The ability for emergent narratives to arise from systems is another strength of the medium.

You're obsessed with the medium only having one thing that makes it stand out, the one you chose. That's bollocks. What's is the strength of novels? What is the strength of music?

Originally Posted by Doesn'tmeananything

'Game' is a clear concept, I'm just arguing against obfuscating it.

Then where were you when computer games first came on the scene? Adventure was one of the first, and according to some people that wouldn't count as a game. Nor would Monkey Island etc. That was the time to have these arguments if you wanted to stop the definition of the word changing. Because right now it already has.

Originally Posted by Doesn'tmeananything

Who's been arguing about it for decades, exactly?

No-one, which is why it's bloody weird to start now. It's like trying reclaim the word 'gay' to mean 'happy'. You might have won that fight at some point, but right now you've lost. You say 'game' to someone, most think videogame first. Others think sport. Few think boardgames. Videogames have a greater linguistic claim to the word than 'contests' do. Unless you reject the notion that language can evolve.

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

Do you want to know what is a terrible way to market a game ? The trailer of GTA V.
Is it pretty ? Yes. Is it polished ? Certainly. But as a presentation of a game, it's a fucking DISASTER.

Yes dear. The GTA V trailer. The official version of which has nearly 30 million views on YouTube. I'm sure Rockstar are currently kicking themselves in the face about how much of a marketing disaster it's been.

Originally Posted by vinraith

He's entirely right, but I've long since learned this is a pointless argument to have in these parts. People want their authorial narratives, even if that is fundamentally opposed to what games are and even if it inherently limits what they're capable of.

Whereas what you want also fundamentally limits what games are capable of. There's room for both, it's fine for both to be 'games' along with sports and chess and cops and robbers (oh no! fucking kids! don't you dare call cowboys and indians a game! it has no defined mechanics!) and story-telling RPGs and improv and everything else.

I'm sorry if the purity of your special word got taken away guys, but you're not being constructive here. If you think the distinction is important, come up with new terms, develop a new taxonomy for 'types' of games but you ain't going to turn back the clock on what people currently call 'games' - because it's used far more in that context that it is in yours.

Chess would be improved if there was a story to go along with it. Perhaps after each move the players could read a passage from an accompanying book. Due to the sheer number of possible move sequences and game states in standard chess, the game could be limited to a fixed sequence of moves that every game follows in order to tie in with a single narrative. The gameplay would become the action of moving each piece to the designated spot correctly, without accidentally dropping the pieces into the wrong squares. Upon failure, death occurs and the player would be able to reload that move and try once more.

It's a fair point, because the popularity of Call of Duty completely killed off Chess. It's nearly impossible to find a chess board these days. Just like when Rock and Roll turned up classical music died and it's impossible to hear it any more.

It's not progress, it's just a different fork in the road. They can exist side-by-side. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I have a preference, but I can also see how much fucking cool stuff is going on with emergent gameplay down the other fork too. It's a shame the people that champion those games can't afford us narrative-nancys the same respect.

No one is arguing that all games have to have a story, or even that all games are improved by adding a story, especially if the story is added in a bad way. But actually yes, Chess-with-a-story does exist, it's called Dungeons and Dragons and personally I much prefer it to the original.

Look at it this way, I have a friend who used to work at Looking Glass studios, making hardcore gamey-games. He now works at Telltalegames, and helped make Walking Dead. Another of my friends went to Harmonix, and makes crazy challenge games that are all about developing skill.

I find it absolutely awesome that 'games' encompasses so many different types of game, and find it hugely exciting that this was a year that we saw something based around fantastically solid mechanics and emergent storytelling (XCOM), as well as something based around an adaptive narrative aiming for emotional punch (Walking Dead). Both wings of videogames are flourishing, and isn't it *great* that the medium has room for people who like all sorts of things, for developers who can make all sorts of things, and it's all bubbling together as a melting pot of new ideas feeding on each other?

I don't know who the hell this guy is but he's right that telling a story in a video game is self defeating. If he even meant such a thing.

Explain to me how Might & Magic: World of Xeen, Might & Magic 6 and 7, or the Wizardry Dark Savant Trilogy would work without some sort of story to motivate the character's actions and provide some sort of reality to the world your characters inhabit. I'm not even talking about good stories like Betrayal at Krondor or Pools of Darkness, but even the more half-assed stories in M&M and Wizardry are required.

Chess would be improved if there was a story to go along with it. Perhaps after each move the players could read a passage from an accompanying book. Due to the sheer number of possible move sequences and game states in standard chess, the game could be limited to a fixed sequence of moves that every game follows in order to tie in with a single narrative. The gameplay would become the action of moving each piece to the designated spot correctly, without accidentally dropping the pieces into the wrong squares. Upon failure, death occurs and the player would be able to reload that move and try once more.

This truly is gaming progress, everyone.

You really cannot coexist with otherness, can you?

That is one extraordinarily narrow mind of yours.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

Isn't that already the case with chess. There are a large amount of special plays you can make, which involve predetermined move sequences. I believe some of those moves even have stories behind them. And chess itself is a story - in that you are trying to kill the opposing King; each piece even has it's own little personality abstracted into the movements they are allowed to make.

But I suppose it could be funner to just throw rocks at each other for no reason.

Explain to me how Might & Magic: World of Xeen, Might & Magic 6 and 7, or the Wizardry Dark Savant Trilogy would work without some sort of story to motivate the character's actions and provide some sort of reality to the world your characters inhabit. I'm not even talking about good stories like Betrayal at Krondor or Pools of Darkness, but even the more half-assed stories in M&M and Wizardry are required.

No one continues to play a Wizardry game to find out what happens in the story. They continue to play a Wizardry game to beat it. It's the challenge they want to experience. It's why the vast majority of Wizardry discussions are about party compositions and character builds instead of about the plot and the characters that you meet. It's a very gamey CRPG. Might and Magic is too, to an extent, but a lot simpler and with a greater focus on exploration. The story merely represents a goal for the player, an end point to the challenge and a measure of progress.

This doesn't apply to something like Mass Effect. Ruin the plot and make the characters horrendous and you're left with a 1/10 cover shooter. People only ever talk about the plot and characters in the Mass Effect series. People never discuss their strategies to success but the story choices they made. There's a fundamental difference here.

Whereas what you want also fundamentally limits what games are capable of. There's room for both, it's fine for both to be 'games' along with sports and chess and cops and robbers (oh no! fucking kids! don't you dare call cowboys and indians a game! it has no defined mechanics!) and story-telling RPGs and improv and everything else.

I'm sorry if the purity of your special word got taken away guys, but you're not being constructive here. If you think the distinction is important, come up with new terms, develop a new taxonomy for 'types' of games but you ain't going to turn back the clock on what people currently call 'games' - because it's used far more in that context that it is in yours.

For the record, I'm not trying to limit anything. I'm not calling for story driven games to be banned, I'm not calling for people that enjoy them to stop supporting them. All I'm saying is that cramming an authorial narrative into a game prevents a game from being the best of what it can be: an emergent and meaningfully interactive experience. I support games that take that path, you're entirely welcome to do otherwise. I lament that the kind of game I enjoy isn't more popular and doesn't see more support, but what can you do?